A patron, unknown to me, endeavors to find meaning in the semi-random world of Gerhard Richter.Photos taken at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) in November 2022.Gerhard Richter’s “Mirror, Blood Red” (1991). I had moved on to the next wall while our friend was still trying to sort out the 256 colors, in a posture we might call “museum kyphosis” (a prefrontal cognitive-motor variant of the more limbic-autonomic Stendhal Syndrome).“Portrait Müller” (1965). I am tentatively calling this style “photo-surrealism,” though that might not fit. How about “failing ink-jet printer”??I have given this one the alt-title of “Oh, FUCK it!!”And who hasn’t been there?!“Forest 4” (1990) in perhaps his most instantly recognizable “smear” style.
Without getting too much into the weeds (read as “over my head”) with the art historical aspects of Richter, what strikes me about him is the incredible range of styles in which he has worked. By comparison, better known artists like Pollock, Rothko, Lichtenstein, and Warhol (who all had their own early periods) can play as a “one-note samba.”
Much of my career in radiology has been spent studying, with great fascination, the internal mechanisms of the human body. This blog is an effort to expand that view to the outside world and also to map my own experiences engaging with it.
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Great Exudations 